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If you live in a condominium or in a community with a homeowners association, your mortgage's principal, interest, tax and insurance payment, often called PITI, is only one part of your total cost of housing. In addition to calculating your PITI payment, you will also have to add in the homeowners association fees as well as any mortgage insurance costs to figure out your total monthly expense. Once you've figured out all of the components of the payment, just add them together. You won't have to pay separately for any of the services that your homeowners association is covering as a part of your fees.

Principal and Interest

As long as you have access to a spreadsheet, you can calculate your monthly principal and interest payment with a single command. The command requires you to have your interest rate, your loan's term, and the amount you're borrowing. For example, to find the monthly principal and interest payment on a $350,000 30-year mortgage at 5.25 percent, enter "=pmt(5.25%/12,30*12,-350000)" into Microsoft Excel or Google Spreadsheets, but omit the quotation marks. The command also works with Apache OpenOffice, but requires semicolons in place of commas. The answer is $1,932.71. For a $415,000 15-year mortgage at 3.75 percent, the command is "=PMT(3.75%/12,15*12,-415000)" and the answer is $3,017.97.

Taxes

If you live in a community where your taxes are set directly based on your property's sales price, simply multiply your purchase price by your local tax rate and divide by 12 to find your monthly tax payment. The local rate is available from your county assessor. For instance, if you buy a $415,000 house in a community with a tax rate of 1.13 percent, your annual taxes would be $4,689.50 and your monthly taxes would be that number divided by 12, or $390.79. Since your lender is allowed to collect a little extra to leave a cushion in your escrow account, you may end up having to pay a little more than this, though.

Insurance

Insurance rates depend on your property, your insurer, your coverage and your qualifications as a customer. The best way to get an annual premium is to get a quote online or from an agent. Let the insurer know what coverage, if any, is offered by your homeowners association for an accurate quote. Divide the yearly quoted premium by 12, similar to the way you calculate your monthly tax. For instance, if your annual insurance premium is $2,150, your monthly premium would be $179.17. If you take out a loan with a low down payment loan, you may also have to pay a mortgage insurance premium. Private mortgage insurance and the Federal Housing Administration's mortgage insurance premium are quoted on an annual basis and are usually tied to your loan's balance. If you have a 1.35 percent mortgage insurance premium on a $400,000 mortgage, for example, your annual premium would be $5,400 and your monthly premium would be $450.

Homeowners Association Fees

Usually, a property's homeowners association fees will be disclosed as a part of the listing. If they aren't, you can get the fees from the seller or from the association itself. While that will tell you what the fees are at the moment, you may also want to investigate what they have been and what they may be in the future. Some properties have underfunded reserves that can lead to higher future fees or assessments. Others have ineffective management that leads to constant large increases in the fees. Looking at the past may give you a sense of what could happen in the future.

Adding It Up

To find your total PITI plus homeowners association dues, add up all of the factors. If you add up $3,017.97 mortgage payment, a $390.79 tax payment, a $179.17 condo insurance payment, and a $425 mortgage insurance payment, you will find a total PITI payment of $4,012.93. Adding in homeowners association dues of $427 gives you a total PITI and HOA payment of $4,439.93. Your payment will be different, based on your specific expenses.

About the Author

Steve Lander has been a writer since 1996, with experience in the fields of financial services, real estate and technology. His work has appeared in trade publications such as the "Minnesota Real Estate Journal" and "Minnesota Multi-Housing Association Advocate." Lander holds a Bachelor of Arts in political science from Columbia University.